Elementary School Students Orange County

Someone yelled "Welcome to America!" in Spanish as Luis and Miriam Abreu shyly stepped Wednesday through the gate at John Wayne Airport, where they were greeted by flashing cameras, applause and hugs. "We feel like you are our family," Luis Abreu said in halting English to a crowd of friends, strangers and reporters.

Chaparral Elementary School in Ladera Ranch has a rather expensive suggestion on its back-to-school supply list for students: a laptop computer. "The laptop represents a fabulous learning tool," said Principal Kevin Rafferty, who dreamed up the plan. "The idea is to put that tool into kids' hands so they can learn 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and their learning is not restricted to the classroom."

Three young inventors whose ideas won them praise and honor in Orange County are going Hollywood. About 9 a.m. today, Jay Leno's limousine is expected to arrive at the homes of fifth-graders Alan Foreman and Keerthi Prabhala and fourth-grader Lindee Fruh to carry them to NBC's Burbank studios.

Police said they have cracked a prolific car theft ring in which the masterminds recruited teenagers to sneak onto new car lots and drive away Cadillacs, Fords, Porsches and Acuras. In exchange for cash, compact discs and DVD players, more than 20 children from Santa Ana middle schools stole about 100 cars across Orange County during at least a six-month period before police arrested the three adults who allegedly ran the operation.

Christian Fairing can fire off a list of eight ways to say no to drugs, from giving an excuse to turning a cold shoulder. The 10-year-old Costa Mesa youngster was among 2,000 fifth- and sixth-graders at the fifth annual DARE Fair on Thursday at the Orange County Fairgrounds. The event marked the end of the 17-week school program in which police officers go into classrooms to teach the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse and encourage children to resist negative peer pressure.

"Kiss the pig! Kiss the pig!" the Tustin schoolchildren chanted. What had she gotten herself into? thought Guin Foss Elementary School Principal Liz Friedrich. But she had made a promise, and she intended to keep it. If students would commit to reading at least 15 minutes after school each day for a year, Friedrich said, she'd pucker up to Zorro the potbellied pig. So Friedrich had no choice Friday but to dab on some hot pink lipstick, said to be Zorro's favorite color.

A group of former students from Harbor View Elementary School will be going into space--almost. When the space shuttle Columbia passes over Harbor View on Wednesday, 15 former students will be waiting in the school's multipurpose room, armed with a ham radio and a list of questions to ask mission commander Col. Eileen Collins. Members of the community are invited to attend.

It's an agreement to build moral character, get organized and even give up some TV time. Those are a few of the promises that students at Glen H. Dysinger Sr. Elementary in Buena Park are asked to make at the beginning of the school year. And the youngsters are signing a contract that spells out these obligations, and they're sticking to them. Only one week into the program, half of the 570 students at the school have turned in their contracts.

Christopher Hagan, a 12-year-old from Garden Grove, kept four types of spoiled milk in his mother's kitchen for 21 days, all in the name of science. Some sat on the counter, the rest in zip-lock bags in the refrigerator. His quest: to determine whether milk spoils faster if it has a greater amount of fat. Does it? "Uh, no," Christopher concluded.

Want higher test scores from students? Let there be daylight. Students who work in classrooms bathed in sunlight learn faster and score higher on standardized tests than their artificially lit peers, according to a recent study conducted in south Orange County and two other areas. Elementary students in classrooms with more natural illumination scored up to 26% higher on standardized tests in reading and up to 20% higher in math, the study found.

For 68 Buena Park fourth-graders, the expression "field trip" took on new meaning Wednesday. The students at Raymond Temple Elementary School, who have been studying Cesar Chavez and the history of migrant farm labor in California, got a taste of what it's like to be a farm worker, if only for an hour, as they gleaned string beans from an Irvine field.

A team of elementary school students from two Laguna Niguel schools have won first place in an international competition in creative problem-solving in Knoxville, Tenn. The team, the Gallant Sea Monkeys, made up of students Hannah Gray, 11; Erin Haug, 10; Sarah Leech, 11; Maddie Smith, 11; and Sam Thorpe, 11, took top scores over 50 teams from the United States and eight other countries. They won in the elementary level of the dynamic improv competition.

His friends see him as a hero, a brave 12-year-old who battled the ocean to save a friend. Daniel Quijada, a seventh-grader from Santa Ana, died Wednesday, two days after he was caught in a rip current off Corona del Mar State Beach. Lifeguards said he was trying to help a 10-year-old girl also caught in the strong current. On Friday, his friends at Lathrop Intermediate School raised money to help Daniel's family pay for his funeral.

For the past month, Bonnie Harris' sixth-grade class has been re-creating ancient civilizations out of sugar cubes, clay, pasta and papier-mache. On a 6-by-4-foot wooden board laid with model-train tracks, Harris' 31 students have built their own miniature versions of Mt. Olympus and the Acropolis, Mt. Vesuvius, the pyramids, the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China. One student even crafted a tiny sphinx out of clay for ancient Egypt. Another sculpted a sitting Buddha for the Taj Mahal.

There's a new agenda for meetings among some Santa Ana parents and teachers: how to get lard out of the enchiladas, beans and tacos. The discussions at four elementary schools in predominantly Latino areas will make the parents part of a national campaign to reduce obesity in children. Besides talking to teachers and administrators about writing and reading, parents will work on chiles rellenos. They'll consider whether they need to use lard, traditionally used in Mexican cuisine.

Travis Ranch Middle School students were evacuated from their classrooms Wednesday morning by a team of SWAT officers helping to stage an emergency drill. Police set up the scenario of a disturbance--possibly involving a gun--at a house across the street from the campus. About nine SWAT officers helped to evacuate students from the nine classrooms at the front of the school. Teachers helped clear their classrooms to the rear of the campus, said Sgt.

The superintendent of Capistrano Unified School District said Friday that he will recommend that half the students at San Juan Elementary go to the new Kinoshita Elementary, set to open this fall in San Juan Capistrano. Supt. James A. Fleming said that solution is the most logical to ease crowding at San Juan school, which has more than 1,000 students. Also transferring to Kinoshita would be about 150 students from nearby Del Obispo Elementary, leaving it with enrollment of about 600.

The Future Problem Solvers team at Acaciawood Middle School has spent the school year tackling such global issues as the greenhouse effect. The team took part in the state Problem Solvers championship last month, and one student, seventh-grader Mary Flora, placed first in that competition and will head to the international bowl in Ann Arbor, Mich., next week. Acaciawood has the only Future Problem Solvers team in Orange County.

I started with the first-graders. "How do you like the party?" The students at Cornelia Connelly School of the Holy Child, an all-girls high school in Anaheim, had shelved the holiday party they usually throw for themselves each year. Instead they hosted a Christmas bash Friday for 160 children from Our Lady of the Pillar School, one of the poorest in the Catholic diocese. "Fine," Abigail told me. Adam went a step further, "Cool." The third-graders were no more effusive.

Sixty Woodcrest Elementary School students have been chosen to take part in this year's Veterans Walk of Honor to learn about the heroism of Orange County residents who received the Medal of Honor. The children will participate Monday by visiting the eight memorials next to the County Hall of Administration. Other schools from other districts will also tour the memorials. The event is sponsored by the Orange County Veterans Advisory Council.